Web Site Marketing—Search Engine Submission

Search engine submission is definitely the most effective way to start marketing your Web site. In this article, David deBoer discusses Web sites that can help your site get noticed (especially using search engines) without having to spend lots of cash.

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You might have the best Web site ever created, but if people don't know
of its existence, what good is it? Marketing is a major factor in the process of
"creating" your Web site. to their sites. In this article, I will tell
you about Web It is not an easy task to attract visitors. Many Webmasters
don't know which tools to use to bring more traffic sites that will help
your site to get noticed (especially using search engines), without spending
lots of cash.

Search Engine Submission

As you have guessed, search engine submission is definitely the most
effective way to start marketing your Web site because most visitors still use
them to find your Web site. But submitting your pages is not as easy at it may
seem. First, you must figure out what keywords and Meta Tags to use, and you
have to decide where and how to submit your site.

The following lists some things to keep in mind before submitting:

Web sites using Macromedia Flash: If your page is made up mostly
out of Flash, it will be harder to find it if you do not use Meta Tags,
keywords, and so on very efficiently. The problem is that because the
text that will appear in your Flash file is not in the body of your page, but
inside the Flash file, search engines won't find keywords and phrases in
the body text of your document. You might want to consider using a technique
known as "page copy," in which you can type in some of the most
important phrases and text that appear in the Flash file into the body document,
so that search engines can find it. It's not easy to keep your pages
looking neat and non-repetitive, but you should definitely give it a try.

Web sites using frames: Frames have always caused trouble when
submitting to search engines. The problem is that most search engines list only
the one page that you submit. When submitting a Web page with frames, this can
lead to only the frameset being indexed (which actually has no content in it
except for the "links" to the different frames used, which are then
not indexed). What you can do about this is add some "page copy" (see
previous bullet) or other information into the <NOFRAMES> tags.
These are placed before the closing </FRAMESET> tag. They are
used to show information to users whose browsers are not compatible with pages
using frames (which would usually display a message such as "Sorry, your
browser is not compatible with frames"), but because nearly all Internet
users now have frame-enabled Web browsers, virtually nobody will ever get to see
what you put between these tags. It can, however, be used for search
engines to find keywords and phrases. If you want to make sure everybody can see
your site, you can even place a complete (non-framed) page here.

Using Javascript for navigation: Be careful when using Javascript
for navigation because many search engines do not read links in Javascript, so
your site may not get "spidered" (the process, done by the search
engine, of finding all pages on the Web site by following hyperlink, and then
indexing all of them). This may result in only one page being indexed for search
engine use. This also goes for sites using image-maps for navigation.

Some tips on keywords: Keywords are the words that visitors use to find your
Web site on search engines. Needless to say, they have to be specific to your
product and location on the Internet. Do not try to use "popular"
keywords that have nothing to do with your site (some people think it is a good
idea to include vulgar language in their page's keywords). Although it
might get you more hits initially, it certainly won't keep people on
your site. Keep your keywords specific and simple. I have also seen sites in
which people try to use a color text that is the same as the background color
and then try to stuff the page with keywords (that you then don't see on
the page). DO NOT try this. Search engines can see this as spam and then
blacklist your site.

Some tips on Meta Tags: In previous years, Meta Tags were incredibly
important when submitting your site. They were the primary source of
keywords/links that search engines looked at. However, people started
"abusing" Meta Tags by filling them up with keywords and phrases
(which is obviously not the point because Meta Tags are supposed to provide
clear and simple information to the search enginesuch as product,
location, country, etc.). Although Meta Tags are still important, they are not
as useful as many people think. Do not have your keyword Meta Tags exceed 1000
characters in length, or you might get blacklisted.

After you check the previous tips, you can now choose to either go through
the process of submitting your site manually or pay a fee to have a marketing
company do it for you. There are also various software packages available that
help you go through the process of adding keywords, adding Meta Tags, and then
submitting your pages.

There are lots of search engine submission and marketing services offered on
the Web. Here are some links to paid services and a brief explanation of
each.

http://www.101registerme.com/search_engines.htm.
This site offers five different packages of search engine submission and
marketing, ranging from $29 to $119 USD. The cheapest plan submits to 1000
search engines, directories, and link listings; whereas the most expensive plan
covers more than 600.000 (!). Includes some "paid" search engine
submissions.

http://www.usubmit.com/.
This site offers search engine and listing submission. Its setup fee is $50 USD
with separate fees for each submission, which costs $0.15 upward per submission.
It also has a "bulk" rate of $75 USD per month, which covers just
about everything in terms of submissions, listings, directories, etc. A good
service for big Web sites that are willing to spend money to get noticed. No
adult-related Web sites allowed.

http://www.submitexpress.com/.
This site also offers search engine submission. It promises submission to more
than 75,000 search engines, review and ranking advice before submission, and
detailed submission reports for each site. Its prices range from $24.95 for one
URL submission to $189.95 for a monthly submission during one year. Discounts
are offered when ordering several submissions for different sites at once.

http://www.buildtraffic.com/.
This site offers paid submission, starting from $19.95, which submits to 330,000
major search engines, directories, free for all links, classifieds, and
what's new sites. Not a lot of additional information is available from the
site.

There are many other sites providing paid submissions for Web sites, and I
suggest you try the ones listed here, and try running a search on Google.com or
Altavista. (If a site appears high on the list when you enter your search, it
probably knows what it's doing!)

You can also choose to submit for free (often manually) to many search
engines. Some sites that offer this free redirect service or have links to
submission pages of search engines include the following:

http://www.addme.com/submission.htm.
This site offers free search engine submission to the "top 20 search
engines and directories." You are asked to place its banner on your site in
return, although I am not sure if this is actually a requirement.

http://www.ineedhits.com/add-it/free/.
This site submits your site to 24 popular search engines. Not as fast as
submitexpress.com, but offers a free email address to get the confirmation
emails sent to.

When submitting to free search engine listings (or even some paid services),
you might (temporarily) get spammed on the email address that you submitted with
because almost all search engines send confirmation emails telling you the site
has been added successfully, or ask you to click a link to activate the link.
You might want to use a secondary email address (if you have one) to avoid all
this spam.